Not Red Enough

I am on an old Windows desktop computer and I have the lighting set to he dimmest possibility, but it is still too white. On my tablet, there is an option to make the screen red, but that is not happening. I was hoping f.lux would help reduce headaches, but the lighting is still white. Can I get it to be darker and red?

I am on an old Windows desktop computer and I have the lighting set to he dimmest possibility, but it is still too white. On my tablet, there is an option to make the screen red, but that is not happening. I was hoping f.lux would help reduce headaches, but the lighting is still white. Can I get it to be darker and red?

What color temperature are you using that's not red enough? If it's 2700K, then yes, that is definitely not red at all. It's more of a yellow, like an extremely old-fashioned incandescent 60W light bulb (or maybe a 40W bulb). I know that it looks quite orange at first, but it's truly more of a yellow. If you want something that's really quite red, then you will need to use 1900K or 1200K, which are found in the "Lighting at night" submenu in the f.lux menu. So unfortunately, these temperatures can only be used when f.lux thinks the sun has set. Fortunately, you can make f.lux think that the sun has set anytime you want, but you'd be doing it in a way that's not really meant to be done. I'll show you further down this post. It's really quite easy.

To use f.lux to artificially dim your monitor's brightness, press Alt+Page Down. Alt+Page Up increases the brightness back up, and pressing and holding Alt+Page Up will go straight to full brightness. Artificially adjusting the brightness like this will also adjust the color temperature slightly, and that's done on purpose in order to more accurately simulate what happens to the color temperature of real light when you adjust its brightness.

I also recommend reducing your monitor's brightness, by quite a bit actually (using the buttons on the monitor itself). One cause of headaches at a computer can be from having the monitor's brightness too high. It can also be from the room lighting being too dark. You want to balance the brightness of the monitor with the ambient brightness in your field of vision while you're looking at the monitor (you don't want the monitor to be the brightest thing in your field of vision for too long). Too many people these days use their computer in total darkness, and these are the people who complain the most about eye strain and headaches.

Anyway, so here's how to get f.lux to think the sun has set at any time you want. At first, this will seem difficult, but really, it's very easy. You just have to change your location in f.lux to a place where the sun has set already by entering in the longitude and latitude coordinates of a place where it's currently nighttime. You can use Google or Google Maps to help you with this, or you can just try different coordinates manually in f.lux.. Always zoom out on the map very far so that you can see where your entered coordinates really are (if you left-click the map, then you can use your mouse wheel to zoom out, which can be easier). It's actually kind of fun because I'm getting to know our planet's longitude and latitude. So as you can imagine, after a while you'll just know what coordinates you can enter. Oh, and don't forget to change the letter at the end of the number if you want to be in the Northern Hemisphere or the Southern, or the Western or Eastern. Experiment!

If you end up feeling that this is inconvenient or ridiculous or something like that, then try to keep in mind that f.lux was created and is maintained by just two people: a husband and a wife, whose names are Michael and Lorna. They are the "f.lux team", and they can only do so much. They originally created f.lux for themselves, but a friend or a family member saw it on their computer one time and the rest is history. :)

I am on an old Windows desktop computer and I have the lighting set to he dimmest possibility, but it is still too white. On my tablet, there is an option to make the screen red, but that is not happening. I was hoping f.lux would help reduce headaches, but the lighting is still white. Can I get it to be darker and red?

Does your monitor have color temperature settings?
Many monitors are very blue by default. The monitor should be set to around 6500K if possible.

If the monitor is simply too bright check for a backlight control, or use the contrast control if it does not have one.

It was! We had an apartment with a really cool upstairs loft that was filled with really high CRI daylight lights so I could mix correct colors while I painted late at night... but downstairs was all warm dim incandescent lights... and not to totally ruin the picture but it's California so the fireplace was gas - you turned it on with a light switch! Still the right color though. ^_^

We had sent it to a couple friends, and then put it up on a webpage for fun. A pal tweeted it out to the world, as I remember it was this guy: https://twitter.com/shellen and that was that.

Well that's awesome! I find it interesting you mention the gas fire -- I think that's probably the way to go anyway, I've seen another person use that as well, no smoke, etc, I'll probably do that as well.